Beyond the holy door opposite to the one through which the Kahars had come days before, they climbed down impressively long stairs. Sandstone lions watched over them until the base, where the river forked to form a rocky island accessible through a stone bridge.
Crossing the bridge, Baikal looked down. In the river he saw Tankar and human faces gazing up from the water’s depths, as well as individuals with dark skin. They were calling him, he was sure. He watched his own reflection, a white face among theirs, then he looked deeper as if all the answers were on the river bottom.
You never felt this strange, did you? Skalmold said. Look. The mirror is calling your name.
Baikal closed his eyes and opened them again. Now the strangers were gone. They were there, he thought. I’m not going crazy.
The voice of the Shaman warned him, If you let them take you, they’ll drain your strength away and soon they’ll ask you to stay. Sooner or later, everybody stays.
Bai watched beyond his fears, at the end of the bridge. The island was flat and black, its surface uniform except for the center. And what the Ktisis is that?
The infinite womb of our god, Skalmold answered. They put him in that crab to contain it, and instead he has expanded. It’s life, Bai. Life always finds a way.
From the hole in the black rock, at the exact center of the island, the white appendages flourished. They had a scale surface such as fish skin, and coiled around a ruinous structure—an altar erected between four drooping columns, accessed through five uneven steps.
Everything seemed to have been carved on site.
Baikal stopped while Skalmold advanced to the black altar.
The tentacles moved slowly now, tasting the terrain all around as if they were searching for prey. Bai didn’t understand if they were part of a plant or an animal; or a being with a superior will, he thought when he saw the tentacles stop and look at the old Guardian of the river.
Still that voice, deep inside him, Do your demons…do your demons ever let you go?
In touch with the divine Skalmold, the shit boy shook his head. I’ve never been afraid of them. Not even when they mutilated me.
You should be. When chaos subverts an established order, there’s always reason to be afraid. It’s the thrill of the new, the fear to see our prison come down and face the darkness that lies beyond. It’s like the fear to fall in love. Have you ever had a girlfriend, Bai?
The shit boy closed his eyes and bent his head, but the old Tankar was not making fun of him. Bai heard him sing. He could swear he heard Skalmold singing inside his head as he went forward with a slow but firm pace toward the candid appendages.
Say hello to them. You don’t want to offend them. They are powerful, oh, so powerful.
The tentacles?
No, my boy. I was talking about the world watching you from the banks of the river.
Baikal observed the world standing on the opposite shore—the Kahar, Tormentor and Beshavis clans had reached them, but only the Asmeghin with their sons were crossing the bridge.
Are you scared, my boy? Skalmold asked again, obsessively. Are you scared of the world?
Why? Why me? Tell me now, before it’s too late.
Because we are two of a kind. Maybe we’re the last ones remaining in this part of the world. They should call me the last for a reason totally unknown to them.
The revelation escaped Baikal’s lips, “You’re a Nehama, too.”
Yes, Baikal. I am a Nehama and this is what gave me the resistance, as well as an unbearably long life, the old Tankar answered as the appendages hugged and enveloped him. All Tankars have a greater tolerance to Hanoi compared to the rest of the mortals, but only we Nehamas can resist to the very end, the total knowledge. The most intimate contact with Hanoi doesn’t kill us, this is why I chose your father and this is why—in such difficult times—we chose you as our successor. But you must want it. Nobody has ever become Guardian of the river without having wished it with all his heart.
The ramifications wrapped the ancient body of the Shaman, as if they were savoring him. They went around his neck, encircled his legs and chest and in the end crowned his head, lifting him from the ground.
When the old Tankar opened his eyes, Baikal was hit by so strong a light that he had to shield his face with his arm. Skyrgal is back. We have no more time. I wanted to wait, but this is not possible anymore.
The Asmeghins had joined them. They were watching in silence and amazement with their children at their sides.
“Let the children come to me,” Skalmold said, breaking their terror.
“What’s happening?” Nehorur asked.
“We’re watching a rite we can’t understand,” Gehennah answered. “As old as the stone around us.”
As their parents were talking, the three boys hoping to become the Shaman’s apprentice approached the altar, kneeling at a regular distance from each other.
Vektor made a sound of surprise when white roots sprang violently from the stone to envelope his body.
“Hey!” Nehorur moved a step toward his son.
The old Gehennah stopped him. “No. Not now.”
The valiant lackeys of Vektor seemed too scared to talk. Gamu of the Beshavis and Mutt of the Tormentors let themselves be seized by the white tentacles—their bodies bent to unnatural postures, their heads tilted back in a position that would make it difficult to breathe.
That was when everything slowed down. The Asmeghins moved slower, as the terror in their faces. The river flowed softly. The drops of water raised by the current remained suspended in the vapor.
Everything stopped. Except for the Shaman, who turned his gleaming eyes to Baikal. I am the plan that won’t fail, the crime without trace. And all I really need right now is you.
The shit boy turned to the Tankar crowd waiting on the opposite bank. They were motionless and stared at him. It’s like being at the center of the world, he thought.
And you are, Baikal, Skalmold answered, wrapped in the appendages emerging from the heart of the stone and running faster and faster along his body. This is the time, and this is the only place to be. We’re all at the center of the world in the short, constant moment we are given to change the future. Hanoi is never wrong. You will really prepare the way.
For what?
Skalmold turned again and looked ahead. His lips hissed, “Exodus.” It sounded like a warning. The ramifications crept faster. Every element is part of a whole, and we’re only one piece of a bigger drawing.
Baikal took a step back, but a tentacle held him. He fell, refraining from screaming.
You will lead the Tankars far from their merciless mother, this desert that is killing their children. You just need someone to open your eyes. You just need to tear down this wall and I’ll help you do it. This is the time, and this is the place. If you’re not ready now, you’ll never be.
Baikal clenched his fist. What should I do?
Feed your beast. Now and forever, feed your beast and pay the price of Hanoi.
Gamu, son of Gehennah, suddenly came back to life and tried to break free from the grasp of the appendages. He brought his left hand to the spur penetrating his right side, his legs lifted by a gleaming white snake below the knees. He tilted his head back, before surrendering.
He’s dead. Baikal fell to his knees. “No,” he whispered, and the other boys echoed him. They were moving again and now they were crying, too. Vektor put his hand to the scaly ramification that surrounded his left leg, lifting it while his right arm was enveloped by the same snake penetrating into his father’s side.
As the world watched motionless the sacrifice of the young ones, Bai saw the boy in the center, Mutt, son of Karka, wriggle in the stranglehold of the tentacles. One of these encircled his neck and squeezed. Squeezed.
Squeezed.
Mutt surrendered after a strong and courageous struggle against fate.
Their inertia is already guilt, when they watch the sacrifice of the young, the strong, t
he best.
Stop it, please! Baikal screamed inside his head. He turned to Vektor. No, he thought. Not him.
Why?
Baikal opened his mouth. Then closed it. Because he’s my friend, he’s always been. It’s the world. It’s the world that got in the middle.
A friend, you say. The tentacles moved. Baikal. When it comes to the most important issues, trust your blood. Because blood never lies.
No, please. I have no one left.
You know that’s not true. The white eyes of the old Tankar got lost before the big emptiness.
Hanoi’s appendages moved fast this time. Two slimy darts slipped into the bellies of the Asmeghins Gehennah and Karka. The tentacles didn’t emerge from the other side. They dug in the bodies, branching out into a thousand veins under the skin and emerging out of anywhere. They flourished from the Asmeghins’ eyes and mouth, too, dropping pieces of fur and organs to the ground until nothing remained of them but two Tankar shapes made of shiny scales.
The Last Shaman spoke, Baikal. Kill the face of all your fears. Kill the shadow hunting you in your sleep. Hanoi is hungry and I don’t know how much longer I can hold him. Now it’s up to you. Kill Asmeghin Nehorur. Kill the face of all your fears.
Baikal shook his head, instinctively. No.
Do it or die!
Bai turned to the Kahar Asmeghin, motionless in the white maze. I don’t have a blade, he thought.
You have your hands, Skalmold replied inside him. To kill someone, you just have to want it.
The ramifications forced the Asmeghin to his knees with ungainly sounds, moving the unconscious body to expose his throat.
Baikal advanced. He put his hands to Nehorur’s neck and became part of that still nothingness. A filament encircled his wrist. He felt Hanoi. You are looking for someone, just like me. He had a benevolent nature; Hanoi was trapped. You understand me? That was not his thought, but theirs fused together. We’re always the hostages of the beast we can’t live without.
Skalmold’s voice slipped into their intimate thought, This is the time.
I… I don’t…
This is the place, shit boy. Shit boy! SHIT BOY!
Baikal wrapped his hands around the throat of his oppressor, projecting forward with bloodshot eyes.
An appendage popped out of the earth and hugged him, running under his shoulders, and Baikal remembered everything—the fall from grace, the loss of happiness. He remembered the walls of Assado crumbling down and the darkest shadow advancing with a knife in his hand. He remembered the disfigurement of the corpses of his clan, he remembered the chains, the pain and the humiliation and the stars, more and more distant, the betrayal, the taste of urine, he remembered the slimy touch and the stench of shit, he remembered Tusday laughing of him and Vektor… he remembered Vektor chasing him through the ruins with a wooden dagger as they laughed, when the world was innocent. In the background there was something more, incomprehensible and unreachable, a pain too deep to be experienced by a mere mortal. Is this? Is this the true aspect of the light?
Even your shadow leaves you when you’re in the dark. The fate of Konkra awaits us all.
Baikal shouted. He screamed and tightened his hands.
Skalmold smiled.
Hanoi’s appendages slowly retreated into the ground while Nehorur woke up in a torpid slumber. In that moment, in that breath, the Asmeghin was conscious again and knew he was dying, his red eyes fixed on Baikal, the last curse balancing on his black and slavering lips. His eyes swiveled back. Baikal dug his fingers into the fur. He growled and screamed and cried as the chains that past had tightened around his wrists broke.
“I had a life to live!” Baikal squeezed. “I… we had…”
Nehorur could no longer hear him. Bai released his hands, spread wide open, his arms outstretched as if he wanted to continue to strangle, suffocate, suppress those voices, those fears.
He knelt, his face white against the black stone. A root sprang up beside him and seemed to comfort him.
My master is accepting you, Bai. He’s leaving me, as happened to my predecessor when I was chosen. Now I know there was really no other way to wash the wound and restart the calm chaos, waiting for the horrors to come.
The horrors? Baikal turned to Skalmold, who tilted again his head in that sinister grin of his.
A scream tore through the silence, “You killed him!”
Bai didn’t even have time to turn around. Vektor engulfed him and they rolled on the ground in some kind of a hug.
“You killed him!” the Kahar repeated, overlapping Skalmold’s laugh.
Why? the young Nehama asked. Why don’t you control him too?
The Last Shaman answered, Because I can’t. Because I don’t have to. Because I don’t want. I’m no longer the Guardian of the river. Now it’s you, Baikal. Everything depends on you.
“Why?” Vektor screamed. “Why?”
Baikal growled. He cracked him hard across the face with a fist, then clenched his hands around his neck and pinned him down. “Because! I! AM!” He slammed Vektor’s head against the stone. “I am! I AM!” He stopped and watched Vektor in a spreading pool of blood.
His friend made an amused sound, full of pain. He laughed, his head lying in the widening pool of his own blood. “Yes,” he replied in a faint whisper. “You are…” The final growl: “… the shit boy!”
Baikal slammed his head one last time, hoping it was forever. He was still clutching him, a violent hug. Then he jumped up and turned.
The shadow of the Last Shaman was watching him, black against the sunset. Don’t think. No more, he said. I am the one who was to watch over the fate of the Tankars, and I did. It was necessary to behead the clans who led the sons of the desert into this madness. The Kahars will soon find their new guide in a man come from afar.
A man?
Crowley Nightfall is his name. The soul of the god he was hosting has been torn from his body, but he’s still got the worst part of his power.
How do you know?
I felt it. Remember the web? The center of the circle is a single point, only one among countless others. This is the logic of the most rational madness of Creation. We are all connected, Bai. All connected.
Baikal looked around. The Asmeghins were dead, but a faint breath survived in their sons.
Now it’s time to go, Skalmold said. Your people are fighting a brave, desperate war on the hills. The Nehamas need you, as you need them. They need someone who can look at the stars, and beyond, the undeniable show of the All that changes and is destroyed and is ultimately born again to forever die. He closed and opened his eyes, bringing light back into the world. Become what you already are and follow the beast down its den. Follow the beast to the mystery.
Bai asked, Where is the road?
Where we are going, there are no roads. Skalmold stretched out his arms toward him. Don’t be afraid of your last step from this theater of pain. Take my hands, aware that no one will see you again.
Baikal turned to the Tankars on the shore—his people, his most hated enemy. He took a step. Another. Soon he found himself seized by the roots and sucked by a powerful, negative energy. The clash with the icy water zeroed every thought and fear. He yelled at the unexpected encounter with freedom. He would gladly throw himself in the arms of death, if that was its true aspect.
He looked up and saw the old Shaman with his arms to the sky—a shadow among the shadows, fused with the omnipresent ruins. “Into the flood again!”
A voice overlapped everything.
Her voice: It’s me. It’s always been me.
* * * * *
Years later.
1. Among the Catacombs
“Hold!”
Mumakil pulled the reins of his skar. Warren, just behind him, did the same. The feline steeds planted their feet in the sand raising a cloud of dust. When it settled, a narrow black split appeared at the end of the canyon they had climbed for days.
“Here,” Mumakil said. �
��It’s here. The passage I used to get back to the world of the living.”
Warren got down and scratched the fur under the neck of the skar, which answered with purrs strong enough to move the gravel away.
You, boot-licker kittens, the black man thought, looking up. The high walls of the canyon towered toward the yellow and cloudy sky—a thin, distant strip of light. Their path had got darker and narrower until the opening in front of them.
And that thin darkness promised only death.
“So the damn crab is here,” Warren said as he continued to caress the beast’s neck.
“Except for the river, this is the only way to get to him,” Mumakil answered. “But only the dead go to Hanoi through the river.”
“Are you sure Dagger’s here? I mean, it’s not that I—”
“Dagger? I don’t know. I have a feeling and then…” He looked up at the sky once again, observing the faraway outline of his faithful winged messenger. “…some friends never lie. He must have found his way to Hanoi. And the other way around.”
Warren headed lockstep toward the black rift. “Then we might as well get in there. Ktisis, I can’t wait to see him again, I’ve got a lot of things to tell him.”
Surprised, Mumakil followed him into the dark. How can he be so calm before such uncertainties? he thought. I was naked, naked and lost, when I walked this path to get back to the world.
The daylight, entering by the mouth of the cavern, somewhat illuminated the first part of the way. But the shadows grew longer and deeper as they advanced, and soon they were walking in complete darkness until they met a distant ray of light. It was falling from a high, square opening to rest on a rough fragment of mosaic pavement. Mumakil reached it and lay a foot on it to sweep away the layer of dust. It showed a serene child and half the face of a mother, in tears.
Some sufferings are never forgotten, Mumakil thought. When men die and the flow of time drags away all their trouble, only the ruins remember.
The Tankar Dawn Page 6